Examples

They were, naturally, delighted at everything they saw, and admired her model greatly: but were, nevertheless, loud in their expressions of wonder at what they termed our temerity in venturing on so long a voyage in such a mere boat.

Lee had two surgeons in his corps, Irvine and Skinner; Irvine was apt to expose himself to danger, but Skinner, although he had on one occasion killed his adversary in a duel, was a coward; and the method he now took to punish Irvine for what he called his temerity, was not to dress his wounds until the last.

In this band of gallant men, it is not too much to say, General Pierce was as distinguished for what we must term his temerity in personal exposure, as for the higher traits of leadership, wherever there was an opportunity for their display.

Word History: Today's Good Word is a burnishing of 15th century French témérité, inherited from Latin temeritas "happenstance, accident, at random", a noun derived from the adverb temere "by chance, accidentally". "Blindly" or "in the dark" are other fitting translations of this word because it comes from a Proto-Indo-European word, temes- "dark". We find relatives in Sanskrit tamas- "darkness" and Russian t'ma "darkness" and tëmnyi "dark".

ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin temeritas, from temere ‘rashly.’

He didn't know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came form, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity" (Roy 20)

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.